7 births in just over two weeks

Holy cow, I'm exhausted. The hardest one was the 36 hour labor with a transfer, then 24 hours later I had another birth and was up another 28 hours.

A friend asked me how my kids did after the 36 hour one. I left at 2:30 in the afternoon, kids were by themselves until Dad came home at 5:30 and Dad took them all to a church Christmas party (poor guy!). The next morning Grandma came and got them, dropped the boys off at school and the rest of the kids at the other Grandma's house. The boys walked to the first Grandma's house (they were working at the temple) after school and the second Grandma came and picked them up in the evening. She, of course, spoiled them by taking them to Wendy's for dinner. I got home about 9:00 that evening and was informed that they all wanted to sleep at Grandma's house. She decided to keep the baby too so I had no kids and could sleep as long as I wanted. Of course I naturally woke up at 8:00!

So this friend wanted to know how my kids handled it. She said her kids would have been basketcases after two hours of her being gone. It made me realize how blessed I am that my kids do fine without me. I guess they are used to having a not so normal family life all the time although I feel they definitely have a stable family life. I'm also blessed to have both a Mom and a Mil that adore my kids and are very willing to help out whenever they can.

So here is my question to you all. Last week, before the last two crazy births, I was really wanting to go off by myself or with some friends to get some "me" time. It didn't help that I read somewhere that apprentices need to make sure they are taking care of themselves. I went to a food tasting party on one night and felt guilty because it was more time away from my kids. So how do I find the balance of being gone lots with births, still take care of myself but also spend enough time with my kids. Then there is the cooking and the cleaning and the laundry and the shopping and everything else that comes with taking care of the family. Some days I feel like my relationship with my kids comes last and it should be first. Do I really have the "right" to be going off to be by myself or with friends when I already leave my kids so much already? OTOH, I'm not feeling that need to get away right now. I'm so worn out from all these births that I really want to just stay home!

Pic of my family

http://www.tammyjarman.typepad.com/

It's the 13th and 14th one down, the one with three girls, three boys, baby JZ sitting on my lap. My sil took all the pics. She does great work, huh! I haven't had a great pic taken of me for a long time so I was especially pleased with our couple pic. Sil is supposed to give me CD with the pics on it so as soon she does (hint, hint) I will put it right on my blog.

I also put a bunch of pics together from this year for my sis so she can make a calendar for my Mom for Christmas. I thought I'd put a few of those on here too. Just not today! LOL

My sil has a singing group

I think she has an awesome voice. Go listen to them at http://www.claritymusic.blogspot.com/

In the picture on the left, she is the second from the left, Karen.

Yay! High Speed Internet!

We took a huge leap of faith this month and got rid of our home phone. I already have a cell phone, dh has one through work and we got the kids a phone with my parents family share plan so it seemed a natural step to just get rid of the home phone. It's working ok although we've had a few glitches like when my phone got dropped in the toilet and I had to use the kids phone for a few days. It meant leaving the kids home by themselves without a phone. It might be a good reason to get a insurance plan on my phone.

Anyway, we used the money from getting rid of the home phone and put it towards internet. LOVE IT! I can finally start watching the fun videos from Utube that people love to pass on. I can also navigate much faster which means I can keep up on my blog better and keep up on others blogs too. The transition from no home to internet took us a few weeks plus the laptop, where all my links are, is dying so I haven't been able to update for awhile.

I've started going to births. I'm now up to grand total of 8 births attended. I know, not much, but it's a start. The hardest part is leaving my baby when he is sick. We've had croup and stomach issues going through the whole family. Not fun. So far, though, all the births have been either at night or on the days dh is home so it hasn't affected my family a whole lot.

Yay, lots of good news.

My Mom came home from the hospital last Thursday, the last day that I posted. They shocked her heart and it worked so they sent her home several hours later. She still isn't doing so great, though. Occasionally her heart goes into A-fib and she is tired all the time. I'm going up several times a day to help her with various things and take her places. I hope she starts improving soon.

JZ is 99% weaned! Friday night was the end of my rope. He woke up about 1:30 to nurse and suddenly I realized why I really do not enjoy nursing him. He has this annoying habit of latching on for a minute, nursing then pulling off for a minute. Latching on again, pulling off. On and off for 20 min straight. Usually I eventually put an end to it when I get fed up but Friday night at 1:30 in the morning I'd had all I could take. I was done. Dh took him for awhile and rocked him to sleep. We were up from 1:30 until 5:30. We would just get him to sleep and lay him down and he would wake up. I won't tell you what I eventually did because it isn't pc but he eventually got exhausted enough that he stayed asleep.

Since then he hasn't even asked to nurse at night. I can't say our nights are any better than when I was nursing him but at least dh can take him and he won't throw a fit. He asks sometimes during the day but I just sign all gone and get him a drink or food and he does fine. For the most part he really doesn't get upset when I won't let him nurse. Over all it went much easier than I thought it would. I did let him nurse on Sunday and then again this morning because I was full but I suspect it will be the last time.

So, overall I'm getting a bit more sleep. I was awake from 2:30-5:30 Tuesday morning but it wasn't his fault. I just couldn't sleep. I slept good last night.

So the last bit of good news is that my house work is all caught up. It's cluttered and my fridge desperately needs to be cleaned out but it's all stuff that would only take about a few hours and then it would be all clean. But my laundry is all caught up and all the organizing is done. My next big project is to get some curtains on all the windows. I think my kids would appreciate that! After that I want to clean all the carpets.

Still working on weaning

It will take forever, I think! LOL I seem to have gotten it down to just once or twice during the day. Night time is still insane. I hate to admit but the nights that we do the best are the nights I give him Motrin and Benedryl. He fell asleep before I gave it to him tonight. He woke up at 11:45, it's 1:45 and he is awake again. Yes, I've been awake since the first time he woke up. The night before when I gave him the meds he woke up once at 2:00 and then again at about 5:30. I could handle only twice a night.

My Mom is in the hospital. She went in on Sunday because she was dehydrated and bo explanation for it. She was also have wierd heart rate patterns. 4 days later she has had an angiogram and a stent put in. No idea when she will be home but she still had a funky heart rate so I'm not sure it will be today or even tomorrow. The insane lady started a daycare a few months ago so I've took it over for. I'm near exhausted with taking care of two households and way too many kids!

I'm also worried about a friend. I want to be there for her. I'm just not sure how.

The end of next week I will start attending lots of births. Hopefully things will return back to normal. Not by any means calm but at least normal. Baby, I need sleep!!!

Whats new in our lives?

Not much. I desperately need/want to wean JZ but he doesn't like it so much. Some days it's pretty easy to distract him, other days it doesn't work so well. He has been waking 5-7 times in a night. It's been suggested that if we wean he will quit waking at night. Maybe, it worked for A when she was a baby but I can't figure out a good time for me to miss at least three nights of any sleep at all to get up and walk him back to sleep a dozen times each night. Yes, dh would help but he has been crazy busy doing overtime at work. He needs sleep too. So either I get a little sleep nursing him 5-7 times each night for ever and ever or I get up and walk with him until he goes back to sleep. Biggest problem is that he is a super light sleeper. It's very hard to lay him down after we put him to sleep and have him stay asleep. So I get up, walk with him for 1/2+ hour until he is limp asleep, lay down with him, wait until he relaxes again, move him over to his spot and pray he doesn't wake up. If he wakes up we start all over again. Most of the time if he does wake up right away he wants nothing but nursing. I've never been one to let my babies cry themselves to sleep but I've been tempted a few times. It's sad because the biggest thing stopping me is that I don't have a crib to put him in and wouldn't have anyplace to put it even if I did.

I need sleep!

I need to post here first

It seems I get all my internet stuff done first and then there is no time left over for posting on my blog. Maybe I will start posting here first then read email and if there is time left over then I can read others blogs. We will see. I soooo enjoy reading about others lives! Yep, I admit, I'm nosy!

JK and JA are so very very busy with school. It seems they have more work to do than they have time but they chose to take the classes they took so they will just have to figure it out. JK needs to figure out there is not time to read whatever he wants to anymore. He needs to read the assignments first and then read leisure stuff when he gets done. JA does pretty good and gets most of his stuff done but he also needs to buckle down a bit more. They have memorized "To be or not to be" this week. They are working on elocution, that is speaking in public, using it. This week they have to memorize the famous part of Romeo and Juliet "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art though Romeo" That will be fun"! LOL I'm going to have a couple of romanticists hanging around my home for awhile!

M is learning about Egypt. She is doing great at going above and beyond. She has read most of the books on the additional reading list and is studying all the books that we have around the house on Egypt. Last week she got to dress up like an Egyptian princess, make up and everything! She is on the verge of going beyond me in math. She is doing fractions and fractions is something I've always struggled with. I told her her brothers or her Dad may have to take over very soon.

A is thoroughly enjoying her art class. She made a tooth fairy box and a bag last week. She very desperately wants to learn how to read but doesn't want to put in the time to learn. She also memorizes everything really quickly so I never know if, when she reads to me, it is words she has memorized or if she is really reading it.

S is just S. She seems to follow in her sisters footsteps with everything so it's hard to know what her interests are. Her birthday is Sunday and it was very hard to pick gifts that I know SHE will like and not what her big sister would love and therefore S would like. We bought some things last night so hopefully we will be ok.

JZ is still on the verge of walking but just not there yet. He can stand for long periods of time and take 4-5 steps but thats about it. I was watching another little guy at church that is 2 days older than JZ and he is walking so well. His Mom had to take him out of the meeting and I watched as she was able to send him out the door in front of her and she was carrying only her bag. Yeah, I have to admit a bit of jealousy. Otoh, the list of words he can say is growing by leaps and bounds. The other day JK got in the car and JZ says to him "Kaboom"! LOL He also said "Grandma" yesterday. He is signing a ton, as well.

As for midwifery, it's going. Thats about it. I did have some good news, though. The midwife I'm working under told me I was going to be crazy busy with births in October. I am getting much better at find fetal heart tones and measuring bellies. Not so great yet at figuring out baby position but I haven't had a lot of chances to try yet.

For now I'm busy trying to get my house completely organized. I'm tired of the "for now"s. The little things that I put someplace and say "I will put this here for now and figure out what to do with it later". I'm nearly done with my bedroom and about 1/2 done with my bathroom. We got the garage nearly done but we can't finish it until some things are done in the house, so it's ok. It's close enough that I could park my car in there with just a few adjustments.

Oh, yeah, my trip to Vegas. Lots of fun. Especially the drive down by myself with my 14mo! LOL Actually he did really good. We left very early in the morning so he slept through the majority of the drive. I had plenty of time to get down there so it wasn't a problem the few times I had to stop to take care of him. Unfortunately when we got there we had a huge mishap. I put him in the stroller for just a second while I turned around to get some things to load into the stroller and he fell out. He cut open the inside of his lip really bad. I was not thrilled about finding an instacare by myself in Vegas so I didn't get it stitched up and it looks like I made the right decision because it looks fine now. He just spent the whole time in Vegas looking like he had a pouty lip!

It's been a crazy few weeks

School has started but we have been busy with all the back to school activities and meetings. We've also been busy cleaning out our garage so that we can park in there this winter. Unfortunately now the mess is inside my house! LOL So now I get to spend the next week getting it all put away.

JA started an English class today, AC was supposed to start a craft class today but the teachers daughter was sick so she will start next week, the boys youth group classes will start this Thursday and M's history class will also start on Thursday. Wednesday I have a staff meeting with the midwife I'm apprenticing with, Thursday is our Anniversary. We are going up to our family cabin to spend the night. Without my baby! That will be weird. AC's birthday was Monday but we are having her party on Saturday. So.....we have a very busy week planned! Next week will also be very busy.

The best news is that I've lost 10 pounds! Yippee!

A title

I'm terrible at coming up with titles for my posts because my posts just seem to be about life in general. I suppose it could be "free soap!" because I got 5 bottles of free laundry soap yesterday using PYP and a $10 gift certicate. That should last us about 3 months! I was pretty happy about that.

I guess I could also title it "Happy Birthday JK" since today is his 15th birthday. 15 years ago today at this time I was checking in to labor and delivery. It was a textbook delivery. 12 hour labor, epidural at 12, prom at 2, pit at 3, push twice and deliver baby about 7. I wish I knew then what I know now but I learned things so it's ok. He is such a sweet boy! So incredibly responsible and easy to get along with. I tell him to be home at a certain time and he is home. Tell him to clean his room and he cleans it. We rarely argue about anything. JZ adores him and he is a very responsible babysitter.

I could title it "Finally over the sickies!" JA and A got it Saturday night but the only thing that happened was that they couldn't sleep and just didn't feel good. M and JK got it Sunday and they got it really bad. Both threw up and got diarhea and felt terrible for two days. Yesterday was the first really good day for everyone.

M saw the dr on Tuesday for her tummy pain. She said the symptoms point toward two things. Chronic constipation, which I doubt, and gallbladder. We did an xray to rule out the constipation and a bunch of blood tests. If the xray comes back normal we will do some tests on her gallbladder. I should hear back from them today.

For those in my area, you need to come to a pampering/ moms day (hour) out open house at my house. I have a friend that makes lotions and other pampering fun out of her home. Everybody raves about her lotions! Plus it's kind of cool cause she leaves everything unscented and you get to choose your scent from about 50 different scents. If you want to come it's from 11-2 on Saturday.

Hum I think that is all for this update. Oh yeah, rebecca asked me about recipes. The lasagna recipe was just a basic lasagna recipe. You don't have to cook the noodles first either. Just layer it in your crockpot, noodles uncooked but hamburger cooked, and then cook it until it's done. I started it on high about 3 and we ate at 6 and it could have used at least another hour. As for the yogurt, I will post that later since I have to look up the recipe.

And on it went

The bread I made on Tuesday never did rise so we attempted to make tortilla's. Attempted is the key word! LOL They turned out more like Indian fry bread so I saved them for exactly that. I haven't had time to make any more bread either so I think I will just pick some up from the store instead. My yogurt did fine and is yummy. Lasagna was ok. I trusted dh to be able to tell the difference between a lasagna noodle that was sort of soft and one that was done and, well, he didn't quite so the noodles weren't quite done. Still edible though so it's ok.

So, I went to Bye Bye Birdie and about 1/2 hour before the end of the play, dh texted me and said JZ threw up all over our bed. He hadn't any indication that he was sick before I left except that he wasn't thrilled with the lasagna. That isn't unusual so I didn't think much about it. He threw up the rest of the night and all day Wednesday. I feel bad because I couldn't help a friend move like I had promised because of him being sick. He threw up last night just before bedtime but he hasn't since then so hopefully we are done with it. I'm praying nobody else gets it too!

Life goes by fast!

Amazing how my "days off" get filled up incredibly fast! Sunday was crazy as always. We went to Grandma and Grandpa's house for dinner after Sunday. Dh's Sister and BIL were telling us how incredibly bad the schools are where they live. The kids are continuously faced with making decisions that I would never dream of at that age. It brings to mind the prophesy " Bad will be made to look good and Good will look bad", something to that effect. And you wonder why we homeschool! Of course this is the area 45 min south of where I live that is well known for it's crimes but I wonder how much longer before it gets worse in this area.

Yesterday I didn't have any prenatals until 6:30 so I had sort of a day off. My sil has been asking me to teach her how to use coupons and shop the sales using the http://www.pinchingyourpennies.com site. So I invited her down and just before she got here one of my sweet friends brought me 2 years worth of Midwifery Today to read! YIPPEE! Thats Christmas for me! I then spent about 3 hours with my sil teaching her how to do it and doing the actual shopping. Somewhere in between there my fil stopped by to pick up a drill that dh was supposed to get ready and didn't. So I had to go out to the garage amidst chaos and find this drill and two bits, not having even a clue what I was looking for! LOL I did finally find them after a bit of trial and error, thank goodness. But why is it my inlaws only come when I'm in the middle of chaos?

I left right after dinner to go to the prenatal we had and then got home about 8:30 and crashed. I was tired! Then I woke up at 4:30 and couldn't get back to sleep. So I'm very sleepy today.

Today I was scheduled to have prenatals from 9:00 until 12:00 but the last two didn't show so I was home by 12:00. That was nice but brilliant me, I decided I would use the time to make much needed bread and yogurt and put lasagna in the crockpot. I realized I didn't have cheese so, brilliant me, I took the 4 younger kids to the store. Great idea, Mom! LOL So here I sit, hoping my lasagna will get done by dinner time, praying my bread will raise and my yogurt will set. Oh, yeah, and with a burn on my arm to show for it. The tomato sauce for the lasagna spit at me while it was simmering. I couldn't believe how fast it burned my skin. Sigh! All the while I was wishing I was at calm prenatals. LOL

Tonight I get to go see Bye-Bye Byrdie with the Relief Society. I didn't think I'd be able to go although I dearly wanted to, but someone gave me a ticket they weren't going to use. Yay!

Weight loss ticker

I've decided it's time for more accountability in my weight loss success. I had lost 5.5 and now 4 lbs are back! Blech! I've been saying for several weeks that "today was just a bad day, I don't always eat like this". It suddenly occurred to me that every day was like that and, yes, I do eat that bad! Not good! My biggest problem is that I eat way too much junk food. It has got to change. Both my parents have Type II diabetes and I have a brother that is teetering on the edge of it and I am determined to not join them! I have got to start eating healthy TODAY!!! I don't even care so much about losing the actual pounds since I'm just barely on the edge of weighing more than I should. I just need to start eating right. Thank goodness I already have the exercise down. I go walking/bike riding with a friend 5 days a week. Dh and I have been making a small effort to go Saturday's too but the last month of Saturdays have been way too busy to go.

These are my hangups, the things I need to work on:
-I am breastfeeding so I feel hungry all the time. I need to just learn to stay out of the kitchen.
-I drive 2 hours one day a week, sometimes twice. I always get the munchies when I drive long distances.
-I am a huge chocoholic and so is the rest of my family. If we don't have treats around my family feels terribly deprived. I've been able to say no before, I can do it again.
-Date nights. I need to get dh to take me to better places so I can make better choices.

With that said, here are my goals:
-Stay out of the kitchen during non-eating times. Remember to take one extra minute to eat a healthy snack versus an easy grab.
-Take an extra few minutes the night before my long drive to get some snacks together for the long drive. Pick up some good for me crackers to keep in the car in case I don't have time or forget.
-Just say NO. I've done it before, I can do it again. My Mom gave me some turtles that she bought me on a trip to Yellowstone. I am so tempted to just hurry and eat them all today so I can start tomorrow but I know the better thing to do is to give them to my kids.
-Tell dh my plans so he can help me make healthier choices on our date nights.
-Update http://www.blogger.com/www.fitday.com everyday to help me stay honest with myself.

So, here we go! I have no goals to finish by a certain date because this needs to be a life long change but maybe I will give myself a small reward for every 5 lb loss or for every 5 days of eating right.

Grandma's house

The big kids have spent the last two days at Grandma's house helping her clean house. It is hard on my only because I get used to have big kids help when I need to get things done, so needless to say, I haven't gotten very much done!

Last night I went to a homeschooling meeting for our teen group. It has put a lot of my worries for the year to rest. I was worried because I knew the boys would want to take some scholar level classes and I knew they would be super busy, like studying 5 or more hours per day for each class. It turns out that all of the scholar level classes won't be offered this year. Each of my sons will have two scholar level classes, one each semester. They will also be taking them together, which also works really well for them. JA tends to push JK while JK tends to keep JA on earth so it's a good thing. They will also be taking a public speaking class/parliamentary procedure class and Shakespeare and JK will be taking Ballroom dance again.

In the midwifery news I learned how to draw blood this morning! I got it on the first try, too. I'm blaming it on beginners luck, though. The girl I did it on had great veins. We also went through the birth center that S owns and she showed us where all the supplies were. Now I just need to go on a few births.

It's time for my family to join the world of blogging

It seems to be the best and easiest way to keep in touch with those that I seem to be slowly losing contact with. Hopefully I can even get pics up, which I always seem to have a hard time getting around to.